Innova enters the mobile market: interview

Recently it became known that the Russian company Innova is entering the mobile market as a publisher of games under the brand “Fogame”. In connection with this announcement, we interviewed Maxim Kirilenko, the company’s leading mobile project development manager.

Hi! Please tell us a little about Innova. What does the company do, how long has it been on the market?

Maxim Kirilenko

Hi! Innova has been known on the Russian online entertainment market since 2005. We started with the publication and adaptation of Korean online PC games for the Russian and CIS markets. Since that time, we have successfully launched projects such as RF Online, Lineage 2, Aion, PointBlank, Planetside2, as well as many other MMO games that have fallen in love with the Russian audience. We prepare all projects within the company independently: we translate, adapt, prepare the design, work closely with developers and advise what needs to be changed and refined in games so that they are as comfortable as possible for players.

By the way, you have a service “Fogame”, under the logo of which you display mobile projects. Tell me why this is so and what kind of service is this in general?

“Fogame” is a gaming portal, a place where players can find games for every taste, will be able to learn the latest news from the world of computer games, watch interesting events in our weekly video digest and find and chat with like–minded people and fans of online games.

Previously, “Fogame” united users only with the help of a computer, and in September, anyone with a smartphone will be able to be in touch with “Fogame” through a mobile application or on our mobile sites.

Why did you decide to come to the mobile market? As far as we can judge from the regular reports of Superdata, things are going well in the MMO market, and the mobile sector is still risky.

Everything is stable on the MMO market, but the number of really interesting new products has begun to decrease significantly.

Many online game developers from Korea and China have switched to creating mobile and social games. We also became interested in this direction and decided to try it. Yes, the mobile market is risky, but interesting, especially since more and more full-fledged MMO for mobile devices are coming out, and in this case we are professionals, we can properly launch an MMO project and send a developer if necessary. The fact that we decided to try ourselves in the mobile games market does not mean that we plan to no longer publish client online PC games. Of course not. By the end of 2014, we are preparing to launch several large and long-awaited projects. And we are constantly in search of new and new products.

Pocket Fort

Why did you decide only now?

About a year ago, an idea came up – to develop a mobile direction. For a year we selected games, got acquainted with developers, agreed on the workflow, prepared the entire infrastructure for mobile “Fogame”, developed a mobile application “Fogame” with interesting social “chips”, adapted games, prepared localization and much more. The result of the year of work will be the consistent launch of about 10 projects that we have chosen for Russia. And what to hide, our users have a need for mobile games. They have repeatedly asked us to diversify online PC games with the opportunity to play anywhere.

You are, first of all, as far as we understand, the publisher/localizer. Does it mean that in the mobile market you will act only as a publisher to the Russian market?

That’s right, we have such tasks for the next year. And there are quite a lot of projects that we have chosen for publication. All projects are of various mechanics and styles. There is an interesting task ahead for our entire team. Therefore, at first we decided to make the most of our experience in publishing games on the Russian market, and then think about possible development.

The first mobile game you released was a clone of Clash of Clans – Pocket Fort. But your roots are still MMO, and therefore the question is: will you create / publish more traditional projects for yourself on the mobile market – Asian MMORPGs. And if so, which ones, and when to expect them? By the way, and why did you decide to start expanding into the mobile market with a clone of “clashes”?

Let’s not hide the fact that there are many fans and players of Clash of Clans in the Innova team, but everyone always agreed on one thing in the discussions of the game: there is not enough entertainment in the Clash of Clans action game, it is difficult to make an impressive battle of swords, arrows and magic.  Plus, we have enough fans of Sci-Fi and robots in our team, for example, the Planetside 2 and RFOnline teams are not close to the topic of swords and magic. Therefore, I always wanted to find a game similar to Clash of Clans in gameplay, but with spectacular battles, where real robots, drones, drones converge on the battlefields, where bombs explode, missiles fly, powerful lasers illuminate the battlefield. And then we found Pocket Fort. Here the fight met all our requirements for entertainment and style.

Of course, there are also technical aspects: the game had to be small, with a minimum of text, a maximum of interfaces in order to understand and work out all possible localization and adaptation problems from Asian languages on the first project. And here Pocket Fort fully met the requirements: 50 thousand characters for translation, a lot of interface elements, an interesting server structure. We have gained a lot of experience, but there are still a number of technically important tasks that need to be solved in order to raise the mobile games service to an even higher level.

There are big plans for MMO, but I can’t tell you in more detail.

And the last question: what do you expect from the mobile market, how much are you ready /have already invested in your mobile division?

The mobile direction is actively growing and developing, and we expect that this development will not stop in the next few years. We are waiting for new and interesting high-quality projects from different developers. Now mobile games are still at the initial development stage. Devices are becoming more powerful, many developers are switching to stronger engines, games are changing, becoming more complex, interest in the gameplay is growing, the quality of graphics is getting better and better every day.

Thanks for the interview!